The Synoptics report one temple clearing at the end of Jesus’s ministry (Mark 11:15-18), and John reports one at the beginning (John 2:13-22). The strong majority of scholars argue that only one temple clearing occurred. Usually, Mark’s chronology is preferred. A minority of scholars argue that John’s chronology is more plausible. Still fewer argue that Jesus cleared the temple twice, once at the beginning of his ministry and once at the end.
It is true that New Testament studies is generally hostile towards this last position. There is, however, a wide chasm between the strength of this scholarly majority and the strength of the arguments given in support of it. We must not let the mere presence of a strong majority prevent us from assessing the evidence on its own terms — to do so would be to conflate sociology with epistemology. To the evidential battleground, then, we must go. Here are 10 reasons to think that Jesus cleared the temple twice.
1) Both Mark and John present their respective temple clearings with tight temporal links. That is, the most natural reading of John's and Mark's accounts is that they are each narrating chronologically.
Mark sandwiches his temple clearing in between the cursing of the fig tree. Jesus and his disciples come to Bethany the day after the Triumphal Entry (“On the following day”, Mark 11:12), they go out of the city the evening of the day of the temple clearing (“when evening came”, Mark 11:19), and pass by the withered fig tree “in the morning” (Mark 11:20).
Some scholars argue that John’s temple clearing can be read achronologically. [1] Against this interpretation, the Passover mentioned in John 2:13 and 23 seems to be referenced in 4:45: “...the Galileans welcomed him [Jesus], having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast.” The article preceding “feast” is anaphoric. To suggest that John is achronologically narrating a post-Galilean-ministry event is to suggest that 4:45 refers to a feast which has not really yet occured. This surely makes for an awkward reading. [2]
2) The accounts aren’t all that similar. Besides the obvious fact that they occur on different occasions, other differences tell against the idea that “the two traditions describe basically the same actions”. [3] In Mark, Jesus quotes Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11; John tells us that the disciples remembered Psalm 69:9. John alone records Jesus making a whip of cords. Mark alone records that Jesus prevented anything from being carried in the temple.
More importantly, Jesus seems to be clearing the temple for different reasons in each account. In John, Jesus protests that commercialism has intruded into holy space. Mark, however, presents Jesus’s temple intervention as a prediction of its destruction in an acted parable.
The similarities are hardly significant evidence for either view, because, as Leon Morris notes, “it would be practically impossible to tell a story of temple cleansing without them.” [4]
3) In John 2:20, the Jews say, “It has taken forty-six years to build (oikodomēthē) this temple, and you will raise it up in three days?” This precise time marker raises a number of issues, not all of which can be resolved here. For our present purposes, however, it should be noted that this number fits better with an earlier period in Jesus’s ministry than a later time.
First, Josephus tells us in Antiquities 15.380 that “Herod, in the eighteenth year of his reign, and after the acts already mentioned, undertook a very great work, that is, to build of himself the temple of God”. [5] Many scholars have understood Josephus to be claiming that the building itself began during this time, that is, 20/19 BC. I think a more careful reading shows that this is when Herod only began to make preparations for the building, not that he began to build the temple itself: “he [Herod] then began to build; but this not till every thing was well prepared for the work” (15.390). But giving some time for preparations, we can reason that the temple construction began around 19/18 BC. Counting 46 years from the building of the temple, we come to 28/29 AD. If Josephus’s statement that the temple itself was built “in a year and six months” (15.421) is counting from “the eighteenth year of Herod’s reign”, then the temple was completed in 18/17 BC. Counting from the completion of the temple, we come to 29/30 AD.
Luke 3:1 gives us another clue. It tells us that John came baptizing in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar’s reign. This time marker too is not without it’s interpretive difficulties. [6] But, for the sake of brevity, I’ll save the details for another time and say that I think this brings us to about 28 AD, give or take a year. [7]
Putting these data points together, the precise “forty-six years” detail fits best within Jesus’s early ministry, shortly after John came baptizing. To make this detail fit a later ministry one would have to pull Tiberius’s fifteenth year back and push the construction or completion of Herod’s temple forward. This move is especially unwarranted in light of the cumulative case that I am making here — why arrange the dates apart when they can be made to fit?
4) In the trial scene in Mark, the Jewish leaders quote a garbled form of Jesus’s saying found in John 2:19.
And some stood up and bore false witness against him, saying, “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.’” Yet even about this their testimony did not agree. (Mark 14:57-59)
Interestingly, nowhere in Mark’s Gospel is this saying of Jesus actually recorded. In John 2:19 do we find a close parallel on Jesus’s lips: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” However, the Jewish leaders in Mark remember a distorted version of it — in John’s version, Jesus never claims that he will actually destroy the temple; instead, he tells the Jews to destroy it, using the ironic imperative (another way of saying, “do this and see what happens”). This misquotation makes sense if Jesus’s original words were uttered on an occasion earlier than the Markan temple clearing. As Craig Blomberg puts it, “The charge makes much better sense as a garbled recollection of John 2:19 two years later.” [8]
5) An earlier temple clearing fits well within the context of Jesus’s mission to Israel. [9] The Synoptics present Jesus as having an understanding of himself as the harbinger of the kingdom of God, and as having a messianic self-understanding early on. The Synoptics, however, only narrate one visit to Jerusalem at the end of his life. We may therefore rightly ask how Jesus could have seen himself as “sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 15:24) while only having gone to Jerusalem once. Moreover, given that the temple was the center of Israel’s worship and the symbol of Yahweh’s covenant with His people, we may also rightly ask why Jesus would have gone to the temple itself only once. John’s account of Jesus’s multiple visits to Jerusalem, including more than one visit to the temple itself, answers these questions. As B. F. Westcott wrote, “It was fitting that the Lord’s public work should commence in Judaea and in the Holy City... not only at Jerusalem, but also at the centre of divine worship, the sanctuary of theocracy.” [10] It was also fitting that the Lord’s public work should end there.
6) The cryptic nature of Jesus’s response to the Jews fits well with an earlier setting in Jesus’s ministry. In the Synoptics, Jesus speaks more clearly about his death later in his ministry, especially in his last week in Jerusalem (e.g., the parable of the vineyard in Mark 12:1-12). He at least speaks clearly enough such that the Jewish leaders understand what he is saying (Mark 12:12). Earlier in his ministry, the Synoptics report an allusion to his death, but it is much more veiled: “The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day” (Mark 2:20). Jesus’s statement in John 2:19, then, more comfortably fits an earlier period in his ministry than a later one.
7) The early Jewish opposition towards Jesus early in his Galilean ministry is explained if Jesus has cleared the temple on an earlier occasion. Mark 3:22 and 7:1 record them having come from Jerusalem to evaluate his ministry. Already implicit in Mark 3:22 is a sense of hostility, which makes sense if Jesus had already angered them on a prior occasion. An earlier temple clearing in Jerusalem, as John reports, is the best candidate for such an occasion.
8) The Synoptics hint at prior visits to Jerusalem. Though they do not narrate multiple visits to Jerusalem, clues in the text interlock with and confirm John’s narration of Jesus’s multiple visits there. Jesus says in Mark 14:49, “Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me.” This would be an odd statement to make if he had only gone to the temple the last week of his life, but it fits nicely with a ministry continually centered around the center of Jewish worship. The same can be said for Matthew 23:37: “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!” [11]
9) Doublets are characteristic of Jesus’s ministry. Mark reports two feedings (Mark 6:30-44 and 8:1-10), one of 5,000 and one of 4,000. Similarly, Luke 5 and John 21 report similar events. In both cases, Jesus appears on the shore to Peter while he is fishing, and Peter catches a miraculous number of fish. The former occurs in a pre-Easter setting, the latter in a post-Easter setting. In both these cases, Jesus himself consciously initiates the event — these doublets do not occur by coincidence. Jesus seems to have been fond of doing some things twice.
Of course, this has not stopped many scholars from arguing that these events in the Gospels too represent later developments of original traditions which knew of only one of each event. But why not let the primary sources speak for themselves?
This, of course, is a minor point, because it does nothing to prove two temple clearings directly. It does, however, make the notion of two temple clearings more plausible, and it shows that the “deep-seated scholarly bias against doubles of anything in Scripture” is unwarranted. [12]
10) There are no good objections to two temple clearings. The reasons given by most scholars for rejecting the two temple clearings are three: a) the Johannine and Synoptic accounts are too similar, b) no Gospel reports both clearings [13], and c) Jesus would not have been able to get away with two temple clearings, either because the authorities would have arrested him on the spot after the first, or would have barred him from coming back again. [14] Objection a) we have already answered.
Objection b) amounts to an argument from silence, which will always be only as strong as our ability to conjecture what someone would have reported had or had not an event occured. Ancient history is full of surprising omissions. [15] Moreover, using an argument from silence to argue against an event which is not reported anywhere is one thing; using it to argue against an event that is reported is quite another.
As for objection c), five points can be made.
First, the Jewish authorities may have initially been open to what Jesus was doing in the first temple clearing. Victor Eppstein argues that, after the Sanhedrin was expelled from the Temple to the Hanuth (market) on the Mount of Olives around forty years before AD 70 (m. Sanhedrin 41a), the High Priest Caiphas “permitted vendors of doves and other sacred offerings to set up shop in the Temple court by way of punitive competition.” It is plausible, then, that the Jews, upon seeing Jesus expel these market items from the temple, sided with him in the controversy against Caiaphas. [16]
Second, the first intervention in the temple was small, and it probably would have been taken as a symbolic action, reminiscent of the Old Testament prophets. There was no attempt to start a riot, at which the temple authorities really would have arrested him on the spot. As E. Randolph Richard points out, “The [Johannine] text implies Jesus stopped his activities as soon as the Temple authorities arrive, indicating his actions were for that purpose and not for the purpose of actually removing all vendors from the area.”
Third, if John 2:23 suggests that Jesus won over the crowd, it might have been unprofitable for the temple authorities to arrest Jesus the first time. Compare their hesitancy to arrest him in Mark 12:12.
Fourth, the temple authorities did not yet know who Jesus was the first time, and could have easily dismissed him as someone who posed no serious threat after hearing his cryptic reply. They misinterpret his statement, and think that he is claiming to be able to actually rebuild the Herodian temple in three days (John 2:20).
Fifth, though it has been argued that the authorities would not have allowed Jesus to come back to the temple on any visit subsequent to the first clearing, there is no reason to think they would have been able to carry this out. Passover crowds were massive, and both the Synoptics and John report that their attempts to seize Jesus was thwarted by fear of the crowds (e.g. Mark 12:12) or the inability to track him down (e.g. John 8:59). Moreover, they should not be expected to have constantly been on their guard over a period of two years.
These 10 arguments, I think, suffice to resolve accusations against Gospel reliability concerning the placement of Jesus’s temple clearing.
Notes
[1] E.g., Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel: Issues and Commentary. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 88.
[2] A point made by Lydia McGrew, The Eye of the Beholder: The Gospel of John as Historical Reportage. (Tampa, FL: DeWard, 2021), 288.
[3] Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John: Introduction, Translation, and Notes, 2 vols. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), 117.
[4] Leon Morris, Studies in the Fourth Gospel. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1969), 26.
[5] Trans. William Whiston. This statement seems to be a correction of his earlier statement in War 1.401 that Herod began to build the temple in the fifteenth year of his reign.
[6] The interpretative complexity of this passage is summarized in Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, The Gospel According to Luke: Introduction, Translation, and Notes, 2 vols. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979), 455.
[7] Here I am siding with John Meier, The Roots of the Problem and the Person, vol. 1 of A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 386.
[8] Blomberg, Reliability, 89.
[9] This argument and the following two are made by Allan Chapple, “Jesus’ Intervention in the Temple: Once or Twice?” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 58.3 (2015): 545-69.
[10] B. F. Westcott, The Gospel According to St John: with Introduction and Notes. (London: John Murray, 1896), 40.
[11] Blomberg, Reliability, 53.
[12] D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 177.
[13] Jörg Frey, Theology and History in the Fourth Gospel: Tradition and Narration. (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018), writes of scholars who seriously consider two temple clearings: “These scholars adopt this ‘solution’ even though none of the canonical Gospels actually supports such a possibility: it is simply harmonizing a combination of passages from different texts.” (89-90, emphasis mine). Such harmonization sacrifices “common sense… in favor of the aprioristic principle of defending the alleged historical ‘truth’ of all biblical accounts.” (91).
[14] Brown, John, 117, writes: “That we cannot harmonize John and the Synoptics by positing two cleanings of the temple precincts seems obvious. Not only do the two traditions describe basically the same actions, but also it is not likely that such a serious public affront to the Temple would be permitted twice.” Craig Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary. 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 518 n. 241, commenting on Augustine’s proposal of two cleansings: “Augustine, by contrast, argues for two cleansings… as if historically the Sadducees would have allowed his survival during any subsequent visits to Jerusalem!” (Emphasis mine).
[15] Josephus, for example, does not mention Claudius’s expulsion of the Jews from Rome. See other examples in Tim McGrew, “The Argument from Silence.” Acta Analytica, 29.2 (2014): 215-228.
[16] Victor Eppstein, “The Historicity of the Gospel Account of the Cleansing of the Temple.” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der Älteren Kirche 55.1 (1964): 55.
[17] E. Randolph Richards, “An Honor/Shame Argument for Two Temple Clearings.” Trinity Journal 29.1 (2008): 29.
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